Accelerating quotation by 3x at a European manufacturer

European Manufacturer accelerated quotation process by 3x and increased revenue by up to 5% 

Challenge

A leading European manufacturer was struggling to convert an ever-growing stream of customer RFQs into accurate, on-time quotations. Every request landed in a different format – PDFs, spreadsheets, emails – triggering hours of manual processing just to create a clean requirements list. Because historical quotes, proven configurations, and portfolio information were scattered across spreadsheets, systems, and organizational silos, engineering and sales had to hunt for information instead of re-using solutions that already existed.

The lack of a single source of truth fueled a variant explosion and forced long cross-functional alignment to reconcile data, validate feasibility, and estimate price and schedule. As a result, quotation teams frequently started from scratch, response times stretched, deadlines were missed, and incomplete offers were sent out. Opportunities were lost to faster-moving competitors. The slow and manual quotation process was putting growth at risk in an increasingly competitive market.

The impact continues in the engineering phase. Engineers treated each won bid as a new program, creating additional redundant variants that already existed in a similar form. Unnecessary development work slows down project delivery and drove up costs.

Approach

The manufacturer introduced SPREAD’s Engineering Intelligence Platform to accelerate the quotation process. Within three months, SPREAD ingested data from requirements, previous quotes, product configurations, architectures, and related documents to create a structured product database for selected product lines. A one-month rollout followed, gradually onboarding respective engineering and sales users. The teams gained access to tailored insights – integrated into their daily workflows without requiring tool replacements. This was subsequently rolled out to additional product lines within the company.  

Based on SPREAD’s Platform the Product Explorer Solution was deployed: 

• Automatic transformation, translation and analysis of new requirements to accelerate initial processing  

• Comparison of new requirements with previous configurations and portfolio to quickly determine similarities and feasibility 

• Deep dive into all relevant documentation (e.g., design, components, pricing) of similar products in one place to quickly create new quote

Impact

SPREAD’s solution directly and quickly translated into measurable outcomes for the manufacturer:

• Up to 5% revenue increase: By being able to respond to more customers RfQs in a shorter amount of time

• 3x faster quotation process: Enabled by automated requirement matching, reducing alignment effort between sales and engineering

• More reusage of existing variants: By efficiently reusing similar and validated configurations

“With SPREAD we can provide quotes faster and with less manual alignment. This has allowed us to send out more offers and win more tenders, that we likely could not have bid on before.” 
— Sales Manager